


This is the army of none, got no flag, got no home

by Devilc



Category: Terminator - All Media Types, Terminator Salvation (2009), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-07
Updated: 2010-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:44:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/pseuds/Devilc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus Wright is sent back in time to meet a teenage John Connor and in the process ends up working some issues out with Derek Reese.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the army of none, got no flag, got no home

**Author's Note:**

> (1) Written with love for Caly.(2) Originally published in the Con*Strict 2010 'zine.(3) Title and quote come from the Queens of the Stone Age song, "You got a killer scene there, man ..."(4) Companion piece to [A Strength that Cannot be Measured](http://archiveofourown.org/works/51431).

> Don't wanna love you no more  
> Don't wanna love you less  
> I wanna be crushed by your sweet caress  
> What's the fuckin' difference, we all gonna die  
> You gonna do something killer?  
> C'mon give it a try 

It hit Marcus Wright with startling clarity five minutes after meeting Derek Reese: fuck or kill.

Given that this was Kyle's older brother? Marcus really didn't want to kill him.

~oo(0)oo~

It felt kind of weird, meeting a teen-aged John Connor. He wasn't yet the intense soldier Marcus first met in 2018, or the much sadder but coolly calculating general of 2028 who moved men and machines around like pieces on a chessboard.

Sarah Conner turned out to be everything John said and so much more. Like Derek, Marcus snapped to when she gave the word. But the John he knew had failed to mention the sparks in her green eyes, or the soft waves of her walnut brown hair, or the way her face lit up when she flashed that rare brilliant smile and allowed tenderness to peek through her usual steel-hard ruthlessness.

Not that Marcus planned to make a play for her. He'd learned the hard way about shitting where you eat, and he got the distinct impression that Sarah had fallen in love once ... and that it ended in tears and heartache.

Besides, when it concerned John, everybody else was a piece on _her_ chessboard. There to help her stop Judgement Day or to teach John what he would need to know for the world after.

Cameron? Cameron gave Marcus nightmares. The kind he woke from screaming. _There but for the grace of god ...._.

Derek? Several weeks in and still fuck or kill. They only agreed on two things: stopping Judgement Day and keeping John safe.

It didn't help that looking at each other was like looking in freakshow mirror. Derek's clothes fit him. They liked the same music, the same food, the same aftershave. They moved alike, came to the same conclusions, _completed each other's sentences_ , and on more than one occasion, spoke in unison. And when it came time to make mayhem? God _damn_ , they clicked.

It unnerved Marcus.

It was like having an evil twin.

 _That you liked._

(Even when he copped a 'tude and made you madder than your own brother ever did.)

Marcus wondered if Derek's problem with him had more to do with this than with _Metal_.

(Like having an evil twin. One you wanted to fuck so badly it made the nerves in your teeth itch.)

~oo(0)oo~

"I've got a mission for you," John said. The cool tone and closed off expression on his face at odds with the brightly colored little boy bedroom he stood in. He had changed since the day his mother had gotten shot and almost bled out, and the slatey expression in his eyes gave Marcus a frisson of deja vu when he said, "It's Riley."

Marcus shook it off. "Yeah?"

"I ..." John paused for a long time, the look in his eyes growing even more remote, "need you to follow Riley." He swallowed hard. "Something's not right with her."

Yeah, because Marcus knew somehow that he wasn't just talking about her recent suicide attempt. Anybody paying attention could see that in her own way, Riley was as wrong as Cameron. Marcus kept his voice flat as he said, "I'm going to need her cell phone."

John arched an eyebrow.

"I don't have Derek's or Cameron's ninja skills. Besides, why aren't you using them for this?"

"I have my reasons."

"What do I tell your mom?"

"Ugggh," John huffed in thought as he scrubbed his hands through his hair. "I'll handle her."

Marcus chewed his lip for a moment. "Well, anyway, I need her phone for a few minutes so I can get a lock on the GPS in it. Once I do that, I can track her better. I'll stick close, but stay out of sight."

John cocked his head. "Providing she doesn't completely power her phone off."

"Yeah, but she's a girl, so what are the chances?"

Even John had to laugh at that.

~oo(0)oo~

Marcus spent the next five days trailing Riley, always out of sight, never out of range. She spent almost no time with her foster parents. Just dropped in to grab a snack or sometimes even a meal. At night she returned to sleep and shower. Her days were spent with John or roaming the streets. Marcus didn't sleep for more than four hours at a stretch and showered, shaved, and changed his clothes only when she visited the house with John.

~oo(0)oo~

The shit hit the fan when Riley made a visibly upset phone call and then beelined straight for a posh resort hotel. The kind where people with serious money stayed on extended vacations.

Hell, the bellhop in the elevator assumed Marcus was somebody's personal protection.

(Which _was_ true in a manner of speaking.)

The sounds coming from the other side of the door that Marcus tracked Riley to spoke of a brawl. No, wait -- that was a life and death struggle. He would know. He didn't think, just reacted. Kicked the door clean off the frame and burst in, gun drawn.

A dark-haired Eurasian woman had a battered Riley pinned to the floor, but judging by the blood coming from _her_ split lip, Riley'd gotten in a good a few good licks of her own.

"Who the hell are you?" the woman asked. She had a thick Australian accent and a pistol with a silencer pointed at his chest.

Marcus grinned and brought his pistol up. "A friend of Riley's. Put the gun down and step away."

"Uh-uh, mate." She pulled the trigger as he launched himself at her.

Psip-clink! Marcus felt the impact about as much as he heard it. He tackled the woman off of Riley and slammed her into the edge of an overstuffed chair.

"You're _Metal_ ," The woman whispered almost disbelievingly.

"Not exactly," he replied as he flipped and and pinned her face down, arm pulled up hard. She'd struggled, but Marcus was so much stronger it was like trying to wrestle a toddler. Riley sat up, dazed, and scooted away. Marcus, still straddling the mystery woman, reached into his pocket, flipped her his phone, and said, "Call Sarah."

Still acting on autopilot, Riley caught it and flipped it open, but before she could dial, shock set in and she began shaking so hard she dropped it. "Y-you ... you're ..." her lips formed the word "Metal" but no sound came.

"No," he hissed. "Not like _that_. I'm --" Marcus reached for the voice his mother had used on him and his brother when they were little and she needed them to pay attention and do something right now. "I need you to call Sarah, Riley. Can you do that?"

She nodded woodenly.

"Call Sarah and tell her to bring Derek if he's around. Say it's an emergency and that you need her help."

She managed to dial and somewhat incoherently stammered out to Sarah what had just happened -- he found out the woman was named Jesse. "Derek's not in, but she's going to call him," Riley said as soon as she hung up.

"Good. Now I need you do something about the door." As she crawled over, he looked around the lushly appointed room. He'd never stayed in a place this nice, but figured that with the ruckus they'd made, security would call at any moment or, worse yet, knock on the door.

As if on cue, the phone rang. He clapped a hand tightly over Jesse's mouth. To Riley he said, "Pick it up."

She did, putting her hand over the receiver and mouthing, "It's security."

"Tell them you're sorry about the noise."

"W-we're sorry about the noise." To her credit, Riley managed to sound a lot less rattled than she looked.

"It was a little adult horseplay and it got out hand. Smile when you say it and it will sound believable."

Riley pasted a big grin on her face and said, "We were horsing around up here, and, well, it got a _little_ out of hand." She actually sounded coy. Perfect.

Beneath him Jesse squirmed hard, biting his fingers, grinding her jaws to inflict maximum damage. It hurt like fuck, but one of the advantages of being whatever he was included modified reflexes. He could make himself not flinch, could turn off previously involuntary reactions, could mute pain. "You'll break your teeth first, bitch," he said under his breath. Looking back up at Riley he continued, "Good job. We're really sorry and it won't happen again."

"We are so sorry," Riley's voice took on an almost sing-song cadence. "It won't happen again. Promise." She nodded and uh-huhed before she hung up.

"Excellent. Now, I need you to bring me a washcloth out of the bathroom and the cord from the base of the phone."

In a matter of seconds Marcus had Jesse gagged and hogtied. He put a pillowcase over her head for good measure.

"Are you alright?" he asked as he handed Riley a wet washcloth. He could see blood matted in her hair and she was going to have some wicked bruising come morning.

With a trembling hand she accepted it and timidly dabbed at her face. "W-why are you h-here?"

"John told me to keep an eye on you."

"Oh." She teetered over to a couch and as much sat down as fell on it as her legs gave out.

Marcus went to the bathroom, splashed some water on his face, wrapped a wet washcloth around his bloody fingers, and returned to Riley, crouching before her, taking a deep breath as he thought about how he wanted to phrase his next question when he heard the distinctive sound of a shotgun being cocked from the doorway he'd forgotten to close.

"You." Loathing dripped from Derek's voice as his eyes took in the room.

Marcus returned the glare and paused a beat before replying, "Me," in a deceptively mild voice. He didn't want to have to kill Derek. He didn't want to have to kill anybody, but right now, for Derek, it was looking a whole lot more like die than fuck.

Riley stood up. "Derek, you need to put the gun away and _listen_."

"Where's Jesse? Is she okay?! Did he --"

Riley's voice snapped, steel hard. "Derek, put the gun down and listen to me. _Marcus isn't the problem here._ "

~oo(0)oo~

John showed up, alone, five minutes later, his face settling into the hard brittleness that Marcus had seen more and more of lately. He feared he was witnessing the birth of future John -- that Judgement Day hadn't started the change in him, but events in his life _Before_.

"I texted him," Riley said. "He has a right to know what's really been going on, not get the spin doctored version of it later."

It seemed Marcus had underestimated her.

John took a seat on the couch, huffed out a deep breath, and said, "Alright then, let's get started. Somebody get the door."

"Your mother --" Derek began.

John cut him off by asking Riley, "Does this concern her?"

She shook her head. "Not directly."

John's mouth tightened into a thin line. "Like I said, let's get started. Derek, get the door."

~oo(0)oo~

Marcus watched the whole thing leaned up against a wall, not too far from Derek (but not too close to him, either, he didn't want to set him off) and damned if his heart didn't break for John several times. It broke for Derek, too, when Derek discovered the extent to which Jesse had used him, used his trust, betrayed his love.

(And men like Derek? Marcus knew they didn't give their love away often, or cheaply.)

His heart broke for Sarah, too, when she showed up half way through, minus Cameron, sat on the couch and took John's hand into hers. She had dedicated her life to teaching John about how to fight Skynet, but now she was getting a very cruel and pointed lesson in how she'd failed to teach him _politics_ , as if Judgement Day would end all that.

John's use of his name snapped Marcus back to reality. "Who sent you back?"

Marcus lifted an eyebrow. "You did."

John nodded at that then asked Derek who had sent him back.

"Barnes, he's your second."

John's brow furrowed in a frown. "Was it my order, though?"

Derek shrugged. "Don't know, didn't ask. Barnes just said he needed men for a mission and asked for volunteers. My whole squad stepped forward." His voice held a note of quiet pride on that point.

John steepled his hands. Sarah started to speak, but he silenced her with a gesture. Looking at Jesse, he said, "Other than Kyle Reese, as far as I can determine, I've never sent a human back.

"You say that it's because I'm cold, unfeeling. That I care more for Metal than I do for people, but you're _wrong_ , Jesse.

"Metal? Can be replaced. It can be fixed, rebooted, reprogrammed. People can't be. When they're gone? It's for good. You seem to think I don't know that."

Marcus's heart sank at the words. John, it seemed, divided the world into People and Metal and now he knew on which side of the divide he stood.

After what seemed like a very long pause, John spoke again. "How much money do you have, Jesse?"

When she didn't answer, Derek pointed a pistol at her. "'Bout $250," she grumbled, eyes fixed, not looking at anybody in the room.

"Good. I'm going to let you go --"

" _John_ \--" Sarah cut in.

John looked at his mother for a long, tense moment. She relented. "Human life is precious, Jesse," he spoke, voice soft, barely above a murmur. "Even yours. Pack a bag. Derek and Marcus are going to take you to the airport. Buy a ticket. One way."

Right. Marcus pushed himself off the wall. "Any place in particular?" he asked.

"No. Just so long as it's one way, and as far as possible." John dropped his head down, studying the floor, clearly drained by the whole thing.

Marcus nodded.

"Don't come near us again," Sarah said, voice as cold as blue steel. "You do and we'll know. There won't be mercy the second time around."

~oo(0)oo~

At the second stoplight, Derek pulled out a silenced pistol, stuck it in Jesse's ribs, and said, "I'm not John Connor," before pulling the trigger. She flopped over onto Marcus, shuddered once and was still. Marcus had two murders under his belt, but the smooth and ice cold efficiency with which Derek dispatched Jesse shook him.

( _And he thinks I'm the monster, the not human one._ )

"I thought John said --"

"I'm not John."

 _Oh, you're more like him than you realize._ Marcus studied the body flopped face down across his lap, took a deep breath, and said, "Hand me the gun."

"Why? So you can shoot me?"

"No," Marcus replied as a strange calm washed over him. "So I can destroy it." He leaned over Jesse's body, picked up the shell casing from where it had landed in the cup holder, and folded it over on itself several times as if it were a gum wrapper before pitching it out the window. "If they somehow lift prints off of that, well, I died back in 2003, so it will be quite a mind fuck."

Derek glanced at him appraisingly and a grudging respect crept into his eyes. With a heavy sigh, he handed the pistol over. Marcus wiped it clean with the end of his shirt and swiftly disassembled it into its components, pocketing the silencer and bullets. He then spent the next 15 minutes directing Derek to a remote section of the LA storm drain system as he methodically bent, crushed, and snapped anything he had the strength to destroy, tossing the smaller fragments out the window at random intervals. (The rest he would drop down various drains and trash bins when he got a moment.)

"We're in luck," Marcus said when they got there -- the frenzied new construction of the past few years hadn't overrun these hills with a cookie cutter master planned community. "Don't touch her. I'll handle her from here on out." With Derek following along, as carefully as he could, Marcus carried Jesse down into the culvert and up into the drain tunnel. They walked for a minute or two, Derek's penlight guiding the way when the daylight vanished, before he set her down, laying her directly in the path of the water trickling down the drain both to help wash away evidence and also to speed decomposition. "I wish we had something to cover her with."

Derek huffed once, then turned and headed towards the mouth of the tunnel.

"You're a cold one."

Derek paused mid step. "When I have to be." He didn't look back when he spoke and the tunnel made his voice take on a strange hollow tone.

"Man --"

"She lied to me," Derek hissed, voice low and sharp. "She lied to me, she lied to Riley, and she played John."

"She played _you_ ," Marcus replied.

"Like a damn fiddle." Derek fisted his hands into his hair, spun, and before Marcus could pull him away, viciously kicked Jesse's body. Marcus grabbed his arm. "That's what I was --" Derek twisted wildly trying to break free of Marcus's grip, "her fucking meat puppet!" Marcus hauled Derek away, his feet flailing as he tried to stomp her face.

Marcus slammed him hard against the side of the drain. "I get it, man. _I do._ " He turned Derek towards the entrance and pushed, "But we've got to go."

As they climbed back into the truck, Derek said, "So, how did you know about this place?"

Marcus snorted bitterly. "Like the song says, 'I've got friends in low places.'" He chortled and said, mostly to himself, "Well, they weren't really friends, but they certainly were in low places." _And I found them. And I became one of them._

Derek didn't speak as Marcus told him the ugly story of the man he used to be _Before_ , of three lives wasted, of waking up _After_ and choosing a different path, in fact, Derek's face remained so expressionless it could have been carved from marble. To Marcus's surprise, Derek didn't head straight back for the house, but instead drove cross valley, heading up into the lower foothills, ending up in a well kept neighborhood not too different from the one Marcus had grown up in, maybe a little nicer, but not a world away.

"I need to show you something," Derek said as he rounded a corner and slowed the truck to a crawl. "Third house on the left."

A house like any other. In the long afternoon shadows, an older boy talked on a cell phone while a younger one with a slightly too big baseball cap on sat on a brick wall, tossing the ball up and catching it, swinging his legs as he waited for his older brother to get done.

Derek pulled the truck to a stop in front of a house with a for sale sign in front of it. After a long pause, during which he studied the two boys in the rear-view mirror, he spoke: "Some of the happiest days of my life. Talking to a friend from school, making plans for tomorrow, and then playing catch with my little brother after dinner."

"Wait! That's --" Marcus started to turn in his seat but Derek stayed him.

"Pretend you're looking at the house. Yep. That's me and him." He tilted his head back and sighed before speaking, voice heavy with nostalgia, "I remember the day my parents brought Kyle home. I know a lot of my friends hated it when their kid brothers or sisters tagged along --"

"I know I did." Marcus snorted. "But then again, I spent the first 20 plus years of my life being an asshole."

"You still are." Derek smirked at him before he continued, "But I never did. It was just so much damn fun to have this little squirt around, teach him stuff." He paused. "Sometimes, I think I was as proud of him as my dad was." His face clenched with emotion for several moments, but when he spoke again, his voice was flat, almost blank. "It was the worst day of my life when we got separated by an HK attack. He went one way. I went the other, and for the next seven years, I thought he was dead."

Marcus nodded. "I can see why. It makes a certain amount of sense for the Resistance to not keep a whole lot of records, or at least not keep them centralized. Makes it harder for Skynet to figure out who's who, or how many's left."

"Also makes infiltration by Metal that much easier. It's hard to know when all you've got most of the time in the field is somebody's word, and, well, the war's made us all a bit strange."

Marcus smiled tight and thin. "That's putting it lightly." He sighed. "Enough memory lane. We need to wash and vacuum the truck. And then we need to sell it. Cash. Unless he's been busted in the past few years, I can tell you where to find a guy."

There was an almost grateful look in Derek's eye as he put the truck into gear.

~oo(0)oo~

Derek stopped the truck at the foot of the driveway, his hands alternating between clenching the wheel and tapping out a staccato pattern on the rim. Marcus said nothing, just waited for him to make the next move.

(Stopped himself from reaching out, reaching over. This truce between them was too new, too fragile. He didn't want to break it by rushing things.)

"I need to be alone for awhile," Derek finally said, eyes fixed straight ahead, as if that could hide the storms rolling through them.

Marcus nodded. "Be safe." He slid out of the truck and trudged up the drive.

Sarah, Cameron, and John hadn't returned yet and Marcus couldn't decide if that was a good or a bad thing. He stripped off every stitch of clothing and threw it in a garbage bag so he could burn it later in the BBQ before allowing himself the indulgence of a long shower. And still they did not return. The weight of their absence, the silence of the house unnerved Marcus.

Once upon a time he would have gone out and stirred up shit, or gotten high, or found some gal or guy, or some combo of all that, so as to have some noise, some distraction, anything to not be alone with himself and the thoughts tumbling through his head.

Death row changed that. He would never like being alone, but at least it wasn't unfamiliar and frightening territory anymore.

They returned long after dark just as Marcus drove a knife through a huge Dagwood sandwich. John said nothing, just went straight upstairs and to his room. Cameron followed.

"Where's Derek?" Sarah asked as she fished a cold soda out of the fridge.

Marcus shrugged. "Probably where he stays when it's not here." _Hopefully cleaning it out_. He put half of the sandwich on a plate and passed it to her. "You don't have to worry about Jesse."

Her hand froze in the act of reaching for the sandwich. "I ... see." She picked it up, took a bite, chewed thoughtfully and said, "You like the sweet-hot mustard, too." She flashed a bittersweet smile at him.

"Somebody has to." He returned the smile.

He let her get about half way through the sandwich before he asked, "So, where were you guys?"

Her mouth twisted. "Taking care of Riley."

Marcus grinned crookedly. "I take it not the same way that Jesse's been taken care of."

(Wow, and how fucked up was that -- that they could so casually acknowledge homicide?)

She gave a short, sharp bark of hysteria-tinged laughter before taking another bite of sandwich. Tiredly tucking a stray wisp of hair aside, Sarah swallowed and said, "No. She's starting the first day of the rest of her life, new name, new photos -- Cameron did an amazing job with the forgery -- at an alternative boarding school in Northern California."

Marcus fished another cold beer out of the fridge, uncapped it and took a long pull. "So, what happens when the holidays come?"

Sarah buried her face in her hands and sighed heavily.

"I see." He took a bite and chewed. "And if she doesn't ... do well in school?"

"Marcus, she was a tunnel rat. She's forgotten more about how to survive in dicey places than I'll ever know."

Cameron drifted into the kitchen at that point, cocked her head, and announced in an overly bright way that based on her analysis, there was a 45% chance of Riley running away in the first month. And then stood silently, waiting.

Marcus didn't say anything to that, just finished the sandwich on autopilot, even though it and the beer tasted like cardboard with a tap water chaser at this point. He needed to eat. Things got a little ... strange when he went too long without food or water. (If Riley ran away and didn't come here he hoped she'd catch-out on a freight train and find a kindred soul and see what the rest of the country looked like.) His cybernetics tried to compensate and they weren't designed to do that. (Who was he kidding? She'd probably end up hooked on heroin or meth and die in a squat somewhere.) One of the many joys of being a prototype.

~oo(o)oo~

He stretched out on the couch around midnight, but sleep wouldn't come. (Because he had a brain; like food, it was one of those things he still needed.) As always during times like this, the TV had 300 channels of nothing. He didn't want to watch a movie, or surf the web or look at another issue of _Guns and Ammo_ or _Aviation Week_. He ended up doing what he'd done during those long itchy nights on death row -- played Solitaire.

Cameron paused as she made her ghostly rounds through the house and yards, studied him for a moment, smiled when he made his play, and moved on.

John quietly padded down the stairs a little after 3am. His voice broke the stillness: "I don't think of you as -- I don't think of you like I think of Cameron."

Marcus sat up, scrubbed his hands through his hair, and replied, "Pretty shitty day, wasn't it? And in this house, that's sayin'." Considering the fact that this was a day in which nobody Marcus cared got hurt (except for Riley's bumps and bruises and his fingers) and they weren't hustling to escape from the law, it didn't seem like it should be worse than the class-five-shitstorm day that Sarah got shot and Riley tried to kill herself. Except that it was.

He played his next few cards in the silence that followed -- shit, this was going nowhere fast. Scooping them together, he asked, "You up for a game of Speed?" and shuffled the deck. "Jesse won't meddle in your affairs again," he blurted before he could stop himself. "Derek saw to that." He bridged the deck and swallowed over the lump in his throat.

(And hoped that John would let it go.)

John said nothing; his eyes remained closed off and unreadable as he sat down on the other side of the coffee table and gestured for Marcus to lay the cards out.

"You don't think of me like Cameron," Marcus said in a hushed tone as the cards fapped into piles. "But you don't think of me like you'd think of any other person. Humans bury their dead. You didn't bury me."

John pursed his lips but still said nothing.

Marcus picked up his hand and sorted the cards from high to low before reaching for his starter card. On the count of three, they flipped.

~oo(0)oo~

"Sorry," John said after he'd played the final card.

"'Bout what?" Marcus asked, raking the cards into a pile. This was the third game in 15 minutes -- play went fast with only one deck.

"That I didn't -- that I don't bury you in the future."

Marcus shrugged and shuffled the deck for another go. "Don't be. This isn't about right or wrong. It's about what is. It's about what you're going to do -- what you're going to _have_ to do." He smiled grimly as he looked John in the eye and thought about what life would be like if he had the weight of the world, of all possible worlds, on his shoulders. "I'd've sent me back, too. You play the hand you're dealt, and I'm definitely a face card." He winked and handed John the deck.

John worried at his lip while he laid out the cards. "What's your mission? What did I send you back to do?"

Marcus laughed. "You didn't say. You just told me to make myself useful."

John half-smiled. "For reals?"

"Yep. You said I'd figure it out when I got there." Marcus picked up his hand and started putting the cards in order.

"Have you?"

"Hell no." _The only thing I've figured out is I want to fuck your uncle._ "I'm just like the rest of you, making it up as I go along, hoping to make it through the day."

~oo(0)oo~

The pissy little electric lawnmower died on Marcus as soon as he put a nice big stripe down the center of the lawn. _Before_ , Marcus had never liked yard work, mostly because he'd been a selfish and lazy fuckhead more interested in shoplifting and getting high, but now, he liked it. Seeing the world _After_ gave him a whole new appreciation for things green and growing. Also, mowing a lawn on a Saturday morning was downright normal, and he liked normal because almost nothing in his life was.

And, if nothing else, the John of 2028 had said to make himself useful.

With a sigh he stripped off his T-shirt in deference to the mid-morning sun, tucked it through his belt, hauled the lawnmower into the shed and started getting the housing off. Even before his "upgrades", Marcus had had a knack for small electronics, and it didn't take him very long to diagnose a problem with the solenoid.

Only, working with a fist-sized, wire-wound magnet when possessed of a metal skeleton? Yeah. Right.

~oo(0)oo~

John seemed happy when Marcus asked him for help. Anything to get his mind off of what had gone down a few days ago, Marcus supposed.

"So, tell me about my -- tell me about Kyle Reese." John said as he picked up a screwdriver.

Marcus snorted and smiled. Where to begin .... "Right. So, I woke up in this almost pitch black lab, which, let me tell you, was completely disorienting. I thought for a moment that I was at the Coroners', y'know, down at the morgue, that they had somehow botched the execution ...."

He rambled on for several minutes, talking about coyote meat, and Star, and hiking across an almost unrecognizable LA with this skinny little teenage tunnel rat who showed _him_ \-- the adult, the hardened criminal -- the ropes, when, out of the corner of his eye he saw somebody stop in the doorway.

Derek.

As always, Marcus got something like an electric charge just out of seeing him.

Derek's eyes bored into his, and Marcus could see the storms had passed and Derek had come to a conclusion. It took Marcus a moment to figure it out.

They needed to talk.

Privately.

Now.

Marcus glanced over at John who had been looking at them, eyes rabbiting back and forth, screwdriver resting limply in his hand, mouth slightly agape. Marcus could all but see the wheels spinning in John's head as he tried to think of what to do, what to say to defuse the situation. Marcus smiled on the inside as he said, "Take ten, John."

Shooting wary glances at both of them, John edged his way out

Ah, poor John. He realized that the intense looks between them meant _something_ , but he didn't know what. He hadn't lived enough yet.

Marcus's eyes flicked to the door and Derek shut it then looked at him, his face contorted in a rictus grin and he spoke, voice low, uncertain, "They, uh, they have a name for when a person and a --"

"Metal fever," Marcus cut in.

Derek let out a deep breath and closed his eyes tightly, fists clenched. "But I don't think this is that," he said when he opened his eyes again. A glimmer of hope flickered there.

"You don't strike me as the kind of guy who wants to bang Cameron like a screen door."

Derek laughed explosively in relief. "No, it's not that. Not that at all."

Marcus stepped closer, "With you, I think this is _in spite_ of that."

Derek edged towards him. "It's because you're still a man -- and a good one at that."

Marcus closed the gap, cupped Derek's face in his hands, and murmured back, "I'm a hard man, too. They say those are good to find." And then he kissed him, letting that say what words could not.

It took Derek a moment to fully respond -- perhaps the sudden force and intensity of Marcus's kiss had stunned him -- but then he put his hands on Marcus, one on the shoulder, the other cupping the back of Marcus's neck, pulling him in and kissed him back fiercely.

As Derek devoured his mouth, Marcus dropped his hands down, tugging at Derek's shirt. There wasn't going to be anything subtle about this. The sheer animal need between them wouldn't allow it. And that was fine; they were both soldiers used to having to grab the sweet things in life wherever and whenever. Derek brought his own arms down to help, and if Marcus didn't want it so badly, the way they got things all tangled and kept tripping over each other and just getting in each other's way would have been funny. Finally, Marcus just put his hands to the collar of Derek's shirt and tore it it in half.

Derek stepped back, blinking a bit as he shrugged it off, but when his eyes met Marcus's again, well, Marcus had never seen anybody look so turned on in his life.

Marcus didn't think, just did -- spun Derek around and jammed him into the worktable, heedless of the way several parts bounced off and clattered to the floor. Derek keened, low and barely audible, under his breath.

The lightbulb clicked on. "Like getting manhandled, do you?" Marcus asked.

Derek swallowed hard.

Marcus had never been into that fetish BDSM stuff. Hell, the pictures of people all dressed up for that made him think of Halloween. With him, as kinky as it had ever gotten was having her climb on top and going for a ride and him enjoying the view.

But now? Switches flipped in his mind. He _liked_ the idea of bending a man, of bending _Derek_ to his will. "I'm going to fuck you. Right here. Right now."

" _God_ , yes."

The problem was, Marcus's entire sexual experience with a guy stopped at handjobs and getting blown. This wasn't going to work if he had to stop and ask for directions.

He drew a deep breath. This was _fucking_ , not rocket science. He could figure it out.

He positioned Derek's hands on the worktable, squeezing as he placed them to indicate that he didn't want Derek to move. Next Marcus used his foot to spread Derek's legs while his hands focused on the task of unbuttoning and unzipping. "Commando," he noted as he shinnied Derek's jeans down to mid thigh. Derek did nothing, said nothing, as Marcus positioned him, but his quickened breath (and that hard, leaking cock which Marcus freed from behind that zipper) said everything Marcus needed to know and he felt himself throb in response.

Instinctively, Marcus reached for the wallet in the back of his jeans only to remember it was on the kitchen counter next to his keys. "Condom?" he asked Derek.

Derek snorted and shook his head. "What's that?" he said flippantly. "Look, I've never used one -- never had one to use. Frankly, when I die, I don't think it's going to be the bug that does it. Skynet's got eight million ways to get me today. I'll take my chances."

The part of Marcus that grew up _Before_ and lived here now found it almost taboo to even think about barebacking. But Derek was right, there wouldn't be condoms _After_ , except ones so old and rotten with age as to be artifacts, quaint reminders of The Everything That Was.

"Just so you know, I'm clean. Dr. Kogan needed that for her experiments."

Derek chortled softly. "Fine. Get on with it."

Lube. This needed lube, that much Marcus knew, and he didn't think spit would cover it. He fumbled around in the toolbox and found a small, grime-covered bottle of mineral oil down next to several frayed-out, blackened, greasy toothbrushes that looked like they'd been used to scrub the gunk of ages off a bike chain.

Marcus popped the top and squirted the faintly metallic smelling stuff on to his fingers. Gripping Derek's hip with his left hand, he brought his right into position, causing Derek to tense up as the first slick finger got near the place.

"Derek --?"

"Hurry up and do it, man!" came the reply, hissed out between clenched teeth.

Marcus screwed his eyes shut, and going strictly by feel, drove his finger in.

Ohgod. It was just his finger, and yet? _Fuuuuuck._ He'd half forgotten what it felt like to be inside another person. To feel that warmth surrounding you, to feel it shift and move and flow around you. It wasn't like having his finger up in a woman's clit, teasing her as he went down on her either. Instead of that firm stem to stern velvety grip, a ring of muscle clenched around the base of his finger tighter than a woman could even when she squeezed. He could only imagine what it would feel like sliding up and down his cock. It wasn't better than a woman, just different. And still good.

Derek's breath caught when Marcus added another finger and then he started _riding_ Marcus's hand, giving soft, breathy little exhalations as he pushed down to catch the upstroke. Eyes still shut, Marcus let his other hand drift up from Derek's hip, let his fingers tickle over the ridges of muscle, the old scars, the light dusting of hairs on chest and torso until they found the hard little pebble of Derek's nipple and teased it before latching on and gently twisting. Derek _grunted_ and shimmied his hips on the downstroke and _clenched_ around Marcus and he jabbed back hard in response and, _ohgod_ , if he opened his eyes now it would be too much. He didn't even have his dick in the guy yet, and the feel of him, and the smell of him, and the noises he made had Marcus's dick twitching in his pants, soaking his fly with spurt after spurt of fresh pre-cum on each stroke ... left him feeling like he teetered on the edge of a cliff.

Time to fall over.

He drew his hand out, wiped it on a shop rag, and tore at the front of his jeans, freeing himself. Reaching for the oil, he slicked himself quickly before he positioned himself and drove in, not giving Derek time to adjust before locking his hands on Derek's hips and setting a steady pace.

Marcus didn't have words for the slick wet tightness around him; found his jaw almost clenched shut with the effort to keep from yelling the roof off it felt so perfect, but Derek had plenty ... if you counted an almost endless stream of "harder" and "ohgod" and "just like that", hammered out in an almost cadence call as Marcus rocked into him.

Marcus? About five strokes in he had just closed his eyes and savored the feel of that gloriously tight ring sliding and down his aching dick. It was everything he imagined and more. Dimly he heard some other noises over the sounds they made but, beyond the thump-squeak of the worktable they didn't register at the moment, and he didn't want to waste the effort to sort them out. Nothing else mattered right now except Derek bucking back, hot against him and around him, and the smell of sweat and sex, and the siren song of Derek's voice as Marcus rushed headlong towards the brink.

The orgasm hit him so hard and so suddenly his legs buckled and he dropped to the floor like a man sucker-punched, pulling Derek with him.

Despite the fact he knew he didn't have a chip for a brain, it sure as hell felt to Marcus like a reboot as reality crept back in over the next few minutes: the feel of the floor beneath him; the feel of Derek's clammy skin, the slack weight of him half on top of Marcus, the sound both of them made as they panted for breath; the way dustmotes danced in the light coming in from the window, the smells ....

He eased out of Derek before he fell out, rolled on to his back and took several ragged gasps of air. His brain sorted through the smells and labeled them as sweat and musk and come, and that smell of clean, well-oiled machines peculiar to a garage or a factory. Slowly he sat up, bracing himself on his hand, shaking his head in a vain attempt to snap out of this fugue state and back into reality.

Derek looked over at him, wearing the same slobberknocked expression and they both chuckled. Drying strings of come splattered Derek's chest, and Marcus knew he hadn't touched Derek's dick, and that Derek hadn't taken his hands off that tabletop, not until they fell, so .... Alrighty then. A quiet sensation of pride swelled in him at the realization that he'd been _that_ good.

Their eyes met once again and Marcus nodded in agreement. The missing pieces of the puzzle had come together, they had found their fit, and it was a good one.

Silently, they surveyed the mess they'd made. Those other noises Marcus vaguely remembered hearing? Oh, that would be the sound of just about everything on the worktable, including the toolbox, crashing to the floor. Derek reached over and picked up the little bottle of mineral oil, which had been glook-glook-glooking its contents onto the floor and held it up, shaking it a little, judging how much was left.

Looked to be about half a bottle. Plenty left.

Then again, given the greedy, hungry look in Derek's eyes, it might not be enough.


End file.
